couldn't."

"Oh, hang it all!"

"I couldn't. I'm a very strange girl...."

"You're a very silly girl...."

"I don't see what right you have to say that," she flared.

"I don't see what right you have to say you can't marry me and try to
load me up with golliwogs," he retorted with equal heat.

"Oh, can't you understand?"

"No, I'm dashed if I can."

She looked at him despondently.

"When I said I would marry you, you were a hero to me. You stood to me
for everything that was noble and brave and wonderful. I had only to
shut my eyes to conjure up the picture of you as you dived off the rail
that morning. Now--" her voice trembled "--if I shut my eyes now, I can
only see a man with a hideous black face making himself the laughing
stock of the ship. How could I marry you, haunted by that picture?"

"But, good heavens, you talk as though I made a habit of blacking up!
You talk as though you expected me to come to the altar smothered in
burnt cork."

"I shall always think of you as I saw you to-night." She looked at him
sadly. "There's a bit of black still on your left ear."

He tried to take her hand. But she drew it away. He fell back as if
struck.

"So this is the end," he muttered.

"Yes. It's partly on your ear and partly on your cheek."

"So this is the end," he repeated.

"You had better go below and ask your steward to give you some more
butter."

He laughed bitterly.

"Well, I might have expected it. I might have known what would happen!
Eustace warned me. Eustace was right. He knows women--as I do now.
Women! What mighty ills have not been done by woman? Who was't betrayed
the what's-its-name? A woman! Who lost ... lost ... who lost ...
who--er--and so on? A woman.... So all is over! There is nothing to be
said but good-bye?"

"No."

"Good-bye, then, Miss Bennett!"

"Good-bye," said Billie sadly. "I--I'm sorry."

"Don't mention it!"

"You do understand, don't you?"

"You have made everything perfectly clear."

"I hope--I hope you won't be unhappy."

"Unhappy!" Sam produced a strangled noise from his larynx like the cry
of a shrimp in pain. "Unhappy! Ha! ha! I'm not unhappy! Whatever gave
you that idea? I'm smiling! I'm laughing! I feel I've had a merciful
escape. Oh, ha, ha!"

"It's very unkind and rude of you to say that."

"It reminds me of a moving picture I saw in New York. It was called
'Saved from the Scaffold.'"

"Oh!"

"I'm not unhappy! What have I got to be unhap